The Town Hall of Shimla, who owns it?

Tikender Singh Panwar

“The executing contractor asks the owner that I have completed the repair of your building; now it is my prerogative to either hand it back to you or find another owner of the property.” This is what is happening with the historic town hall building at Shimla. The Tourism Department that executed the restoration work now refuses to hand over the building back to the Shimla Municipal Corporation (SMC). 

The work of the restoration of the town hall was funded by the Asian development Bank (ADB) under the Shimla beautification plan. Right at the inception of the work, fingers were raised at the quality of work, which led to the formation of a monitoring committee that included officials from the Public Works Department and the architect planning. 

On August 26, a meeting was held at Shimla with the Tourism Department.  This meeting was held at the behest of the HP High Court to collect the views of the residents of Shimla to put the town hall to judicious use. The previous mayor and the present councillors resisted the idea of handing over the place to any other department except the SMC. It is believed that a cross-section of the people, including senior citizens, representatives of the tourism industry, army personnel, etc, were of the opinion that the building should be handed over to the people and must serve their (people’s) purpose, than the office of the SMC. 

It is true that the real owner of the property happens to be the people and none other than them. But it is also true that the people are being represented by their elected representatives who are answerable to them. The town hall once completed should have been handed over to the elected SMC who are the custodians of the will of the people.

Why? Simply because:

• The High Court should have been apprised that the SMC is guided by an Act, which has a specific provision under section 157 (a), which was added recently to the Act. The provisos of the section are as [(a) the Commissioner, with the prior approval of the standing committee, constituted under sub-section (4) of section 40 of this Act, may dispose of, by sale, lease or otherwise, any moveable or immovable properties belonging to the Corporation, by public auction; this section very emphatically states that it is only through ‘public auction’ that the SMC can dispose of its property. The reasons for the insertion of this section is explained by Deepak Sanan, the former Additional Chief Secretary to the HP state government who was instrumental about the addition of this section. He categorically stated that it was done in the spirit of the 74th constitutional amendment. He remarked that the insertion was purposely done to ensure that the city government was able to protect its land and other immovable assets for the development of the city. The Gaiety theatre that belonged to the SMC was also “robbed” by the state government (Virbhadra Singh as CM) by forcing the SMC (run by the Congress party) to pass a resolution in the House to hand over the Gaiety theatre to the state government. 
• There have been a series of meetings in the past between the SMC and the Tourism Department regarding the interior design of the building. The office of the mayor, deputy mayor and all important officers, including the Commissioner, Joint Commissioner and heads of departments were to be adjusted in the town hall. Apart from that, the hall for council meeting was designed so that the SMC effectively runs from the building. This basic framework has never been questioned and challenged in the past. 
• It is only in the recent past that the present SMC, which is governed by the BJP and is considered to be timid in comparison to their predecessors that the government is bulldozing its opinion to not to hand over the space to the SMC. 
• The town halls throughout the world have been owned and governed by the mayor and nobody else. Unfortunately, the model of city governance has been copied from the west but the capacities to connect to such a model are still very low. 

(The writer is a former deputy mayor of Shimla and an urban expert)